4 Power Ballads From the Hair Metal Era That Crashed the Pop Charts

Whether you want to call them glam metal or hair metal, the bands that dominated the hard rock scene in the late 80s understood the value of a well-timed power ballad. Many of the slow songs they released ended up being their biggest hits.

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Let’s take a trip back to that era with this list of four particularly successful glam metal ballads. Feel free to take your lighters out for a little waving if you choose.

“I’ll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi

Eventually, Bon Jovi became a band that seemed to release at least one slow song for every rocker when it came to their singles. But it took them a while to make that leap. We suppose that you can call “Wanted Dead Or Alive” a power ballad if you choose, but that one seemed less a calculated ploy to grab the slow song market and more a diversion that went big. Instead, it wasn’t until “I’ll Be There For You”, the third single off the New Jersey album, that the band truly went all-in for the slow-dance crowd. After the song soared to the top of the charts and became one of their most beloved songs, it’s likely they wondered why they waited so long to go this route.

“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison

Much like Bon Jovi, Poison had to be dragged somewhat reluctantly into the power ballad game. “I Won’t Forget You”, the fourth single from their debut album, dipped its toes in that water. But that track was more an homage to 60s rock than anything else. The band then released two massive singles off their 1988 album Open Up And Say…Ahh! before they took a leap with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. Bret Michaels allegedly wrote the song after a long-distance call to a girlfriend revealed a male voice in the room with her. Once this song rocketed to No. 1, the floodgates opened up for hair metal power ballads.

“Without You” by Mötley Crüe

If you were around in the 80s, “Home Sweet Home”, the ballad from Mötley Crüe’s 1985 album Theatre Of Pain, certainly seemed like it was everywhere. But the song actually made its mark as more of an MTV phenomenon than anything else. It only reached No. 89 on the pop charts. Five years later, the band was much more entrenched in the mainstream with their album Dr. Feelgood. “Without You”, a single from that album, delivers more pedestrian vibes than “Home Sweet Home”. But timing was everything. The ballad, mewled tenderly by Vince Neil, earned the Crue yet another Top 10 single.

“Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” by Cinderella

Cinderella couldn’t consistently hang at the level of the three artists we’ve already profiled in this list. But you could place them squarely in the second tier of the glam metal category. In Tom Keifer, they boasted a belter supreme who also served as the band’s chief songwriter. They hit power ballad gold with “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” in 1988, the second single from their album Long Cold Winter. The song doesn’t exactly tread much new ground within the love-gone-wrong genre. But Keifer puts every ounce of emotion into his vocals to sell the lyric and help the song, Cinderella’s biggest ever pop hit, reach its peak.

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